Forest Department confirms issues of intrusion at forest reserve

KUCHING: The Forest Department has confirmed there were issues of intrusion in the Lavang Forest Reserve (Lavang FR) in Bintulu as previously reported by The Borneo Post.

On Tuesday, The Borneo Post had a front-page report titled ‘Claims of intrusion’, which reported the intrusion by an Occupation Ticket (OT) licence holder in recent months at Lavang FR.

“However, this matter is still under further investigation by the Forest Department,” said director Sapuan Ahmad in a statement issued here.

An oil palm plantation company has claimed that 150ha of its land planted with oil palm trees had been damaged and about 50ha of a nearby forest reserve had been illegally logged by the OT license holder.

A spokesman from Sebekai Plantation Sdn Bhd (Sebekai) told The Borneo Post that a shortterm licence under OT/4479 was issued to Dynamic Sungreen Sdn Bhd in October 2015 to enable the licensee to carry out clearing of gazetted Native Customary Rights (NCR) land at Lavang FR in Bintulu.

“Instead of clearing the forest area within the areas as approved under its OT licence, our observation shows that the company had encroached on the nearby Lavang FR with at least 50ha being illegally logged out and also damaging or destroying about 150ha of Sebekai Plantation where about 10,000 oil palm trees were planted,” he said.

The location of these illegal activities and encroachment is said to be about 5km from the Bintulu-Miri road.

The spokesman said the company lodged a police report on Jan 11 at the Bintulu police station against the intruders.

He said heavy machinery from Dynamic Sungreen had encroached into their land and uprooted their palm trees, which were planted seven years ago.

“They have bulldozed and cleared all the area, leaving it barren without any tree left. Their motive is to steal the land and work together with the Kampung Yok natives, who are doing clearing at Block 46, 47 and 48 outside our plantation,” stated the police report seen by The Borneo Post.

In response to this, Sapuan said the core issues raised in the news report only concern the land dispute between the affected villagers and Sebekai Plantation Sdn Bhd.

He also said the intrusion allegedly committed by the licensee OT4479 is a misunderstanding and has been sensationalised.

“Cleaning work area is actually done by the people through Syarikat Maju Wawasan Enterprise to implement rubber planting projects that have been approved by the Department of Agriculture.

“This was acknowledged by the residents of the area comprising the Penan Muslim from Kampung Yok, Sebumbun Jaya, Sungai Labang, KM32, Jalan BintuluMiri during field investigations conducted by the enforcement team of Sarawak Forest Department,” he said.

He added the department was also informed that the clearing work was done because the area claimed as NCR land overlaps with the provisional lease issued to Sebekai Plantation Sdn Bhd.

“During the field investigation, the enforcement team from the Forest Department also found the area has no commercial trees that can be associated with any logging as claimed.

“Based on the evidence and information submitted, the issue raised is only about dispute over rights to the land instead of intrusion that can be attributed to illegal logging activities,” he said.

Responding to Sapuan’s statement, the spokesman of Sebekai thanked the Forest Department for taking immediate action to suspend the Licence OT/4479 and carry out further ground investigation into the alleged encroachment of Lavang FR by Dynamic Sungreen.

“However, the issue of the encroachment into Sebekai and the destruction of 150 ha of planted oil palm trees cannot be just swept under the carpet and cannot be simply regarded by the director of forests as a case of misunderstanding and being sensationalised,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Sebekai alleged that the destruction of planted land in Sebekai had been done using Dynamic Sungreen’s workers and machinery on the pretext of doing clearing of the natural forest under OT/4479.

“Therefore the director of forests is indirectly to be blamed as the OT Licence was issued by his office. The OT Licence is intended to cover the gazetted NCR land only, the boundary of which has been demarcated by the Lands & Survey Department and there is no doubt the issue of overlap with Sebekai does not exist as otherwise Sebekai would have been informed. Surely the boundary of this OT/4479 would also have been checked on the ground first by the Forest Department before the licence was issued.”

As for the claiming of land that overlapped with the provisional leases issued to Sebekai by the villagers of Kampung Yok, Sebekai spokesman said claimed NCR land does not give the villagers the right to automatically go in and destroy its plantation and replant it with rubber trees.

Sebekai also raised the confusing situation on the ground due to the issuance of a letter from the Divisional Agriculture Office, Bintulu to Nicopus Sdn Bhd representing the villages of Kampung Yok approving them to clear 150ha of land which had been leased to Sebekai.

Meanwhile, thesundaypost has not been able to get a response from Dynamics Sungreen on the allegations.